A restaurant that's too small for its following creates pent-up demand and can thrive as it lays plans to expand.
A restaurant that's too big merely fails.
There are occasional counterexamples of ventures that fail because they were too small when they gained customer traction. But not many.
It pays to have big dreams but low overhead.
Your money: Almost no one knows how to think about money and investing. Squadrons of people will try to confuse you and rip you off. Many will bore you. But Andrew Tobias has written a book that might just change your net worth.
His advice is simple: spending less is even more valuable than earning more. He is also a gifted writer, funny and dead on correct in his analysis. Highly recommended.
The brand new edition is right here.
Back story: 32 years ago this month, I had lunch with Andy Tobias. I was pitching him on a partnership, and the meeting had been difficult to get. I was intimidated and soaking wet from running fifty blocks through Manhattan (no Uber!). As I sat in the New York Athletic Club, my cheap suit dripping wet (you can't take off your jacket at the New York Athletic Club), I tried to break the ice by telling the moose joke.
I told it pretty well, but Andy didn't crack a smile. Even then, he was a canny negotiator. We never ended up working together, but his book probably did me more good than the project would have. And the story was priceless.
Your future: Kevin Kelly is the most erudite, original and prophetic futurist of our time. If you've ever picked up a copy of Wired, he's had an impact on your life.
If you hope to be working, producing value or merely alive in ten years, his new book (out in June) is essential. It might take you an hour or two to read certain pages—if you're smart enough to take notes and brainstorm as you go.
The people who read his previous book about the future (New Rules) in 1998 are truly grateful for the decade-long head start it gave them.
I've never had the nerve to tell Kevin a joke, but I did offer to do a magic trick for him.
It's rare that you can spend $33 on two books and have your life so profoundly altered.
PS new Creative Mornings podcast just up with my talk from a few years ago.
Backwards: Great designers don't get great clients, it's the other way around.
Patience is for the impatient.
Leading up is more powerful than the alternative.
...And a few more provocations. I only gave this talk once, I hope you enjoy it.
Sooner or later, tribes begin to exclude interested but unaffiliated newcomers.
It happens to religious sects, to surfers and to online communities as well. Nascent groups with open arms become mature groups too set in their ways to evangelize and grow their membership, too stuck to engage, change and thrive.
So much easier to turn someone away than it is to patiently engage with them, the way you were welcomed when you were in their shoes.
There are two reasons for this:
And so, Wikipedia has transformed itself into a club that's not particularly interested in welcoming new editors.
And the social club down the street has a membership with an average age of 77.
And companies that used to grow by absorbing talent via acquisitions, cease to do so.
This cycle isn't inevitable, but it takes ever more effort to overcome our inertia.
Even if it happens gradually, the choice to not fight this inertia is still a choice. And while closing the gate can ensure stability and the status quo (for now), it rarely leads to growth, and ultimately leads to decline.
[Some questions to ponder...]
Do outsiders get the benefit of the doubt?
Do we make it easy for outsiders to become insiders?
Is there a clear and well-lit path to do so?
When we tell someone new, "that not how we do things around here," do we also encourage them to learn the other way and to try again?
Are we even capable of explaining the status quo, or is the way we do things set merely because we forgot that we could do it better?
Is a day without emotional or organizational growth a good day?
Recently, Mississippi and North Carolina both passed anti-LGBT laws, and many tourists, bloggers, and celebrities promptly said, “Well, as a sign of protest, I won’t go there because I don’t want to support a state whose laws I disagree with!” This reminded me of when people refused to go to Burma because of the junta, declined to visit the United States when George Bush was president, or refused to visit to Cuba because of Fidel Castro. (There are really dozens of examples that could be listed.)
While people have the right to do whatever they want and if you want to take a personal stance, do so but I think tourism-based economic protests are a mistake because they hit the wrong target; they aren’t effective; and, travel and human interaction brings about more change than a reflective boycott. Moreover, governments can and do change: laws are passed and repealed, voters eject politicians and vote in new ones, and revolutions and sanctions topple dictators.
Point #1: Boycotts hit the wrong people.
We might not agree with certain laws or a current government, but if traveling abroad and defending the United States during the Bush years has taught me anything, it is that people are not always their governments, lumping everyone together is misguided, and you end up hurting the people who you agree with.
Like, for example, one of the bookstores I spoke at during my book tour!
This North Carolina store is suffering because authors are canceling the events this place needs to survive. Small independent bookstores are already suffering, and this is just another nail in the coffin. They are collateral damage to a law they do not agree with.
Governments don’t always reflect the will of all their people (or even a majority). Behind boycotts are real people and businesses who suffer. People struggling to put food on the table and meet payroll. They might not support their government or certain controversial laws, yet we lump them all together and these people become the collateral damage of our economic boycotts. We create pain for the people at the bottom – those with the most to lose and usually the least say in things.
And, though the shouts of travel boycotters sometimes add to the pressure on elected officials, I’ve yet to see one country or state reverse course simply because of this reason no matter how strong the plea. (In fact, the governor of Mississippi has come out saying growth is up and everything is fine!)
I used to say, “I’m never going to Burma because I hate the government” and because I wanted to take a stand. But I also found it silly that people said, “I don’t like Bush, so I refuse to go to the United States,” as if this was enough to pressure Bush to change or as if we were all die-hard Bushites. In the end, this made me realize that most citizens of Burma didn’t choose to live under a military dictatorship any more than I chose Bush as president.
And all my protest was doing was denying people the money they needed to survive and the global perspective that could have added fuel to their desire for change.
Point #2: They are not enough.
What caused Burma to change, Iran to open up, or South Africa to end apartheid? It wasn’t a drop in tourist numbers. It was governmental, domestic, and corporate sanctions.
Indiana softened its anti-LGBT law when corporations and conferences pulled out en masse. South Africa’s apartheid government collapsed when governments and major banks and other corporations stopped doing business with it and lending it money. Iran finally yielded under the weight of sanctions that drove it toward bankruptcy.
Those changes were a combination of domestic activism and international pressure not tourist boycotts.
I think it’s foolish to think that somewhere there’s a government official watching reports of tourist boycotts and declaring, “Tourist numbers are down 10%! We must change!” If they cared about that, they would have done something different in the first place.
Governments care about big business, tax revenue and those at the top? When you cause pain there, you cause change.
Point #3: Travel brings change
If you really want to do good, you can’t shut off people from the world — you must embrace them and show them a better way. The way we effect change is by traveling and educating people about the wider world to change their mind.
Staying home isn’t going to effect change. It simply hurts those who might not have control over their government. Travel opens people to new ideas, cultures, and ways of thinking. If you really want to bring about change, go there and kill them with kindness.
I mean, don’t we travel to see the world, learn, and help foster cultural understanding? You can’t do that by staying home. You can only do that by going to the destination.
I don’t support the laws passed by these two states. I don’t support the Castro regime. I certainly didn’t support Bush. Nor do I support the current governments in Thailand or Egypt or censorship laws in China.
Do I agree with the treatment of women in many Arab countries, or Japan’s policy of “forgetting” its genocide in China during WWII? No, of course not!
But I believe boycotting travel to countries because of one law or its current choice of leader is misguided. If we were to compile a list of places with one policy or leader that we don’t agree with, we would never go anywhere. There would always be a red line keeping us home. If you feel the need to “take a stand”, do so but remember people are not always their current government’s policy. I think it’s much better to engage people on the ground, change opinions, and pressure your own government or companies to take action.
We’ll greater change than if we just sit at home.
The post Why Travel Boycotts are a Waste of Time appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.
"I bought the diet book, but ate my usual foods."
"I filled the prescription, but didn't take the meds."
"I took the course... well, I watched the videos... but I didn't do the exercises in writing."
Merely looking at something almost never causes change. Tourism is fun, but rarely transformative.
If it was easy, you would have already achieved the change you seek.
Change comes from new habits, from acting as if, from experiencing the inevitable discomfort of becoming.
It's often about asking, not about what's needed.
Years ago, when I lived in California, I'd go to the grocery store nearly every day. I usually paid by check. Each time, the clerk would ask me for my phone number and then write it on the check.
When I ran out of checks, I decided to be clever and had my phone number printed on them. You guessed it, without missing a beat, that same clerk started asking me for my driver's license number (and yes, I did it one more time, and we moved on to my social security number).
The information wasn't the point. It was the asking, the time taken to look closely at the document.
It's tempting to listen to our customers ("why aren't there warm nuts in first class?") and then add the features they request. But often, you'll find that these very same customers are asking for something else. Maybe they don't actually want a discount, just the knowledge that they tried to get one.
What's really happening here is that people are seeking the edges, trying to find something that gets a reaction, a point of failure, proof that your patience, your largesse or your menu isn't infinite. Get patient with your toddler, and you might discover your toddler starts to seek a new way to get your attention. Give that investigating committee what they're asking, and they'll ask for something else.
They're not looking for one more thing, they're looking for a 'no', for acknowledgment that they reached the edge. That's precisely what they're seeking, and you're quite able to offer them that edge of finiteness.
Sometimes, "no, I'm sorry, we can't do that," is a feature.
